The Art of Gerhard Richter : Bloomsbury Academic : 9781350040328 : 1350040320 : 27 Jul 2017 : The Art of Gerhard Richter: Hermeneutics, Images, Meaning presents the first philosophical investigation of, arguably, one of the most popular and important painters working today, Gerhard Richter. From monochrome painting and photo realism to conceptual art and gesture-expressive painting, Richter has transformed the spectrum of 20th-Century painting. Building upon Gadamer's notion of 'formed images', the book outlines elements of a hermeneutics and a phenomenology of images and paintings. Moreover, the hermeneutic approach to art is combined with the crucial question of how paintings and photographs are related to each other for Richter. The author suggests that paintings ?open up? the fixed relation and intentionality of photographs by idealizing and essentializing the content of the photographs. By relying upon a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach, rather than working from abstra